The GOP long con has paid off (and is still paying off, if one wants Trump to remain POTUS)
There are two different cons that have been pulled on the conservative/Republican rank and file, and even on more than a few liberals/Democrats and independents and such.
The first con is the more obvious one, and the one of more immediate urgency. It is the con where some people believe (in some cases, literally so) that Trump is God's gift to politics. These people have been conned by Trump himself and his immediate circle of lickspittles. They believed every lie that ever came out of his anus-of-a-mouth or that appeared on his fucking Twitter account(s), and still believe even today that the asshole can do no wrong, despite all the blatantly obvious and mounting evidence that the man is a pathological liar, that the man is perhaps literally mentally deranged, that the man is (badly) trying to play everyone for fools, even though it is he, himself, who is the biggest fool of all. This is the short(-ish) term con, and the one that is most likely to burn itself out soon enough, once enough people finally come to their senses regarding Trump and his perpetual lying machine.
The second con is more insidious. While people who were conned with the first con above were also most assuredly conned with this second con as well, my beef is more with the other people who managed to sidestep the first con and who realized that Trump was a non-starter from the very beginning, even before he was nominated. They saw Trump for the charlatan that he is. They voted against him in the primaries (for what good that did). However, and here's where the second con comes in, this second group of people have been conned by the decades long smear campaign that was (and is still being) run against the Clinton name. They swallowed all the lies about her, or at least enough of them to sway their vote. Just as a few examples, they believed the Benghazi bullshit, they believed the Russian Wikileaks email bullshit, they believed the "Hillary laughed about getting a child rapist off scot-free" bullshit, they believed the "Hillary is literally a murderer" bullshit. And they believed the multitude of other, similar lies, large and small, that have been spread about Hillary Clinton, many stretching even as far back as the days of the Bill Clinton presidency. They believed, worst of all, that Trump, horrendous though he obviously is, was somehow still the lesser of two evils. They believed, laughably, that Hillary Clinton was the bigger liar between the two of them. As such, they either voted for Trump anyway, despite their misgivings, or they voted for a third party (which was essentially a vote for Trump), or they didn't vote at all (which, again, was essentially a vote for Trump). About the only legitimate grievance there can be said to pertain to Hillary Clinton, in my opinion, is that she stood by Bill despite his sexual misconduct over the years. Some may view that as a virtue, but I don't know... Beyond that, however, pretty much everything else was a result of the egregious long con, twenty-plus years in the making, which was perpetrated and perpetuated by the GOP on its own members and anyone else they could ensnare.
Thing is, sadly, clearing up this second, long con... well, honestly, it's pretty much far too late for that, assuming that it's even possible at this point, which I kind of doubt. People are going to believe whatever bullshit they want to believe about Hillary Clinton, and changing their minds on that isn't going to change the fact that Trump is already POTUS. Hillary Clinton will not be magically instated as POTUS when Trump inevitably falls, as much as some may wish it would happen. And it won't even really be a factor in Trump's inevitable downfall, either. Ultimately, the second con didn't even care that her opponent ended up being Trump. The first con is utterly irrelevant to the second, longer con. All the long con cared about was that Hillary would lose to whoever was her opponent, and if her opponent had ended up being just about anyone other than Donald fucking Trump, no matter how terrible some of those others might themselves have been, at least we wouldn't be in the midst of the category 5 shitstorm that we're stuck with now, even if Hillary had still ended up losing. But, no, it was just to the grave misfortune of everyone that we ended up in the abysmal situation we are in now, with Trump as POTUS.
The main thing about the second, long con that irks me is all the people who would otherwise (seemingly) be fully on board with resisting Trump but who are still spouting inane horseshit like "well, if you guys hadn't backed a career criminal/murderer/rape apologist/Satan herself, then Trump would have lost" and so on and so forth. "Bernie or Bust" people fall into this category as well (especially if they voted for Trump instead of Hillary, contrary to what Bernie Sanders himself advocated). They spew this kind of asinine verbal diarrhea as though it's somehow helpful. They say this sort of dumbshit as though it's somehow still relevant (even if it were 100% true, which, of course, it is not). This ignores the fact that all of Trump's follies, Trump's malfeasance, Trump's idiocy, Trump's belligerence, Trump's racism, Trump's sexism, Trump's xenophobia, and so on and so forth since becoming POTUS all fall squarely and solely on Trump's own shoulders. Hillary at this point has no stake and no say in what Trump does now, aside from that which any other American citizen has. Whatever dumb bullshit Hillary Clinton has been accused of over the decades has absolutely zero fucking bearing on the horrifying things that Trump is doing now or all of the even more horrifying things that Trump is being accused of having done. As I've said before, Hillary Clinton, at this point in time, is basically a non-factor. Very little that she can say or do now will have any effect whatsoever on how the Trump presidency will inevitably implode, aside from being yet one more voice among very, very many who are excoriating this asshat Trump (unless she happens to have access to some legitimate dirt that can help bring down Trump even quicker, but that's neither here nor there). And yet, these people still stick to their moronic "but, but, but Hillary..." non-argument as their main reason for not pitching in to help take Trump down, and it will never stop being ridiculously frustrating to me.
For me, truly, I don't even really care if people stop thinking whatever dumbshit they want to think about Hillary, at this point. While I personally believe that 99.999% of the accusations made against Hillary Clinton over the decades are complete horseshit, that ultimately doesn't even matter anymore, really. It mattered before the election, obviously, and if enough people had refused to drink the anti-Hillary Koolaid back then, we'd be in a very different situation today, but that didn't happen, and we are where we are, i.e. with Trump badly playacting at being POTUS. And, hell, even if the lies weren't lies, hypothetically speaking, and were actually 100% true, it is still goddamn immaterial when it comes to current-day POTUS Trump and all of his abhorrent dogshit (aside, perhaps, from his broken promise/lie to immediately prosecute Hillary Clinton if he became POTUS, which people seem to have mostly forgotten about, and which I'm perfectly okay with myself, but it's just yet another flagrant lie he sold to his gullible supporters who bought both cons [the pro-Trump con and the anti-Hillary long con]). It helped him to win, whether it was true or not, but it does not affect his current terrible actions at all. Even if Hillary Clinton really was literally Incarnate, that still means nothing whatsoever given that she has been relegated to the sidelines, and Trump is the one who is clearly fucking up everything, everywhere, all the time. All I want these people to do is to fucking stop using Hillary as their excuse for not opposing Trump, as he exists here and now. Hillary has zero sway on that, good or bad. One's opinion of Hillary Clinton is utterly irrelevant to the fact that Trump must be brought down, and the sooner the better, and the sooner these people fucking realize this and stop living in the past, the better. If, after Trump is brought down, they want to go back to hurrdurring about "Hillary for Prison" or whatever dumbshit, then by all means, they can go right the fuck back to it, with my blessing (though I'll still be calling them morons for doing so), but I wish that they would at least wait until after Trump has indeed been brought down.
(To a lesser extent, and more generally speaking [i.e. removing/changing references to specific things], you could also pretty much take all of the above and simply replace all references to "Hillary Clinton" with "Barack Obama" and "past two decades, at least" with "ever since Obama was first elected as POTUS" and it would remain equally as accurate. It's just that there has been less of a full-time industry dedicated to besmirching Obama as there was against the Clintons. Or, rather, the anti-Obama machine has had at least a decade less time to operate than the anti-Clinton machine has.)
The first con is the more obvious one, and the one of more immediate urgency. It is the con where some people believe (in some cases, literally so) that Trump is God's gift to politics. These people have been conned by Trump himself and his immediate circle of lickspittles. They believed every lie that ever came out of his anus-of-a-mouth or that appeared on his fucking Twitter account(s), and still believe even today that the asshole can do no wrong, despite all the blatantly obvious and mounting evidence that the man is a pathological liar, that the man is perhaps literally mentally deranged, that the man is (badly) trying to play everyone for fools, even though it is he, himself, who is the biggest fool of all. This is the short(-ish) term con, and the one that is most likely to burn itself out soon enough, once enough people finally come to their senses regarding Trump and his perpetual lying machine.
The second con is more insidious. While people who were conned with the first con above were also most assuredly conned with this second con as well, my beef is more with the other people who managed to sidestep the first con and who realized that Trump was a non-starter from the very beginning, even before he was nominated. They saw Trump for the charlatan that he is. They voted against him in the primaries (for what good that did). However, and here's where the second con comes in, this second group of people have been conned by the decades long smear campaign that was (and is still being) run against the Clinton name. They swallowed all the lies about her, or at least enough of them to sway their vote. Just as a few examples, they believed the Benghazi bullshit, they believed the Russian Wikileaks email bullshit, they believed the "Hillary laughed about getting a child rapist off scot-free" bullshit, they believed the "Hillary is literally a murderer" bullshit. And they believed the multitude of other, similar lies, large and small, that have been spread about Hillary Clinton, many stretching even as far back as the days of the Bill Clinton presidency. They believed, worst of all, that Trump, horrendous though he obviously is, was somehow still the lesser of two evils. They believed, laughably, that Hillary Clinton was the bigger liar between the two of them. As such, they either voted for Trump anyway, despite their misgivings, or they voted for a third party (which was essentially a vote for Trump), or they didn't vote at all (which, again, was essentially a vote for Trump). About the only legitimate grievance there can be said to pertain to Hillary Clinton, in my opinion, is that she stood by Bill despite his sexual misconduct over the years. Some may view that as a virtue, but I don't know... Beyond that, however, pretty much everything else was a result of the egregious long con, twenty-plus years in the making, which was perpetrated and perpetuated by the GOP on its own members and anyone else they could ensnare.
Thing is, sadly, clearing up this second, long con... well, honestly, it's pretty much far too late for that, assuming that it's even possible at this point, which I kind of doubt. People are going to believe whatever bullshit they want to believe about Hillary Clinton, and changing their minds on that isn't going to change the fact that Trump is already POTUS. Hillary Clinton will not be magically instated as POTUS when Trump inevitably falls, as much as some may wish it would happen. And it won't even really be a factor in Trump's inevitable downfall, either. Ultimately, the second con didn't even care that her opponent ended up being Trump. The first con is utterly irrelevant to the second, longer con. All the long con cared about was that Hillary would lose to whoever was her opponent, and if her opponent had ended up being just about anyone other than Donald fucking Trump, no matter how terrible some of those others might themselves have been, at least we wouldn't be in the midst of the category 5 shitstorm that we're stuck with now, even if Hillary had still ended up losing. But, no, it was just to the grave misfortune of everyone that we ended up in the abysmal situation we are in now, with Trump as POTUS.
The main thing about the second, long con that irks me is all the people who would otherwise (seemingly) be fully on board with resisting Trump but who are still spouting inane horseshit like "well, if you guys hadn't backed a career criminal/murderer/rape apologist/Satan herself, then Trump would have lost" and so on and so forth. "Bernie or Bust" people fall into this category as well (especially if they voted for Trump instead of Hillary, contrary to what Bernie Sanders himself advocated). They spew this kind of asinine verbal diarrhea as though it's somehow helpful. They say this sort of dumbshit as though it's somehow still relevant (even if it were 100% true, which, of course, it is not). This ignores the fact that all of Trump's follies, Trump's malfeasance, Trump's idiocy, Trump's belligerence, Trump's racism, Trump's sexism, Trump's xenophobia, and so on and so forth since becoming POTUS all fall squarely and solely on Trump's own shoulders. Hillary at this point has no stake and no say in what Trump does now, aside from that which any other American citizen has. Whatever dumb bullshit Hillary Clinton has been accused of over the decades has absolutely zero fucking bearing on the horrifying things that Trump is doing now or all of the even more horrifying things that Trump is being accused of having done. As I've said before, Hillary Clinton, at this point in time, is basically a non-factor. Very little that she can say or do now will have any effect whatsoever on how the Trump presidency will inevitably implode, aside from being yet one more voice among very, very many who are excoriating this asshat Trump (unless she happens to have access to some legitimate dirt that can help bring down Trump even quicker, but that's neither here nor there). And yet, these people still stick to their moronic "but, but, but Hillary..." non-argument as their main reason for not pitching in to help take Trump down, and it will never stop being ridiculously frustrating to me.
For me, truly, I don't even really care if people stop thinking whatever dumbshit they want to think about Hillary, at this point. While I personally believe that 99.999% of the accusations made against Hillary Clinton over the decades are complete horseshit, that ultimately doesn't even matter anymore, really. It mattered before the election, obviously, and if enough people had refused to drink the anti-Hillary Koolaid back then, we'd be in a very different situation today, but that didn't happen, and we are where we are, i.e. with Trump badly playacting at being POTUS. And, hell, even if the lies weren't lies, hypothetically speaking, and were actually 100% true, it is still goddamn immaterial when it comes to current-day POTUS Trump and all of his abhorrent dogshit (aside, perhaps, from his broken promise/lie to immediately prosecute Hillary Clinton if he became POTUS, which people seem to have mostly forgotten about, and which I'm perfectly okay with myself, but it's just yet another flagrant lie he sold to his gullible supporters who bought both cons [the pro-Trump con and the anti-Hillary long con]). It helped him to win, whether it was true or not, but it does not affect his current terrible actions at all. Even if Hillary Clinton really was literally Incarnate, that still means nothing whatsoever given that she has been relegated to the sidelines, and Trump is the one who is clearly fucking up everything, everywhere, all the time. All I want these people to do is to fucking stop using Hillary as their excuse for not opposing Trump, as he exists here and now. Hillary has zero sway on that, good or bad. One's opinion of Hillary Clinton is utterly irrelevant to the fact that Trump must be brought down, and the sooner the better, and the sooner these people fucking realize this and stop living in the past, the better. If, after Trump is brought down, they want to go back to hurrdurring about "Hillary for Prison" or whatever dumbshit, then by all means, they can go right the fuck back to it, with my blessing (though I'll still be calling them morons for doing so), but I wish that they would at least wait until after Trump has indeed been brought down.
(To a lesser extent, and more generally speaking [i.e. removing/changing references to specific things], you could also pretty much take all of the above and simply replace all references to "Hillary Clinton" with "Barack Obama" and "past two decades, at least" with "ever since Obama was first elected as POTUS" and it would remain equally as accurate. It's just that there has been less of a full-time industry dedicated to besmirching Obama as there was against the Clintons. Or, rather, the anti-Obama machine has had at least a decade less time to operate than the anti-Clinton machine has.)